Yesterday, Microsoft released the third platform preview of Internet Explorer 9. Nearing it's first beta, IE9 shows a lot of hope and promise for the future of Microsoft's place in the browser wars. Touting its new HTML5 support and better JavaScript engine, IE9 is able to utilize hardware acceleration to deliver a smooth and stellar experience in the browser. As seen in tests, IE9's rendering engine really pushes for overall browser supremacy. This is great news considering the lack of standards, speed, and overall look and feel of previous versions of the world's most dominant browser.

However, let's not forget the other browsers out there. Download Squad decided to do a browser face-off. In a four-way HTML5 speed test between IE9, Firefox 3.7, Chrome 6, and an unspecified version of Opera (probably the latest), Microsoft's latest platform preview held its own. In fact, it was only narrowly beaten out by Firefox (by about 5%). Not only did IE9 and Firefox 3.7 outperform the other browsers by leaps and bounds, both of them also used the least amount of CPU in doing it. Chrome 6 wasn't able to keep up at all. Apparently it doesn't support full-fledged hardware acceleration, yet. Opera performed well for most of the test, but eventually, it wasn't able to keep up.

Keep in mind that these browsers are still in early testing phases (Opera excluded). Many improvements will be made before the browsers actually come to market. With all these improvements being made in attempts to win the browser wars, end-users only have what to gain.